


Wait For Me

by Jairephix



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, I made myself sad, Minor Character Death, Orpheus Maneuver, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 16:16:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20799458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jairephix/pseuds/Jairephix
Summary: Magnus would do anything to hold Julia in his arms one more time. So he makes a deal.AKAMagnus does an Orpheus Maneuver.





	Wait For Me

Despite the struggle they had just endured, and how much Magnus should have found himself relaxing, one thought wove itself to the forefront of his mind. Even as Taako and Merle were chatting and shooting off quips as they tried to upstage each other, he could only stare at the two lights for a moment. The name left his lips before he had a chance to stop himself.

"Kravitz!"

One of the lights paused, bouncing in the air delicately as it lingered near the rift and other others in the room grew quiet. It felt like his words echoed back to him. Had he shouted? "Yeah?'

He paused, maybe for a moment too long, making the silence drag out too long. The words threatened to die in his mouth if he didn't say them, desperate to pass along the message he needed to say.

"Tell Julia I said I love her."

* * *

**5 Years Ago**

* * *

The ruins of Craftsman Corridor were still haunted by the delicate wisps of dust with each heavy, shuddering whistle of wind. The other merchants and residents of Raven's Roost had left well before he had managed to come home. The pain of seeing a horrible monument of what happened to their neighbors and loved ones, settled into so much rubble, was far too strong for far too many of them. Better to seek safer shelter and start anew elsewhere.

It meant, half a week later, when Magnus returned, hoping to return in joy and pride, he was alone with this heartbreaking sight, pain tearing through him worse than any wound he couldn't-quite-remember as he sobbed. He worked through the wreckage for days to find a few scant bodies under the tons of stone and wood. He tried, until he couldn't bring himself to lift even one more rock and wonder blankly which of his neighbors he might find next. The week he suffered through, after arriving to what should have been home, was too painful. Magnus barely ate or slept, and even still, he couldn't get to them all, to lay them to rest properly. He'd have to seek someone out to do agnostic funerary rites, and leave them where they lay. 

It hurt. 

It hurt worse when he couldn't find the two he was so desperate for, knowing they wouldn't have left and not come find him. They would have come to him on the road if they were okay.

It was too much to bear, and his life had shattered before him in a way he hadn't thought possible. Not since--since...what? It didn't matter, though. It didn't matter because he had a plan.

Magnus wouldn't call himself a religious man. He found no comfort in the arms of worship, not when he believed most honestly in the work of his own two hands. He didn't really think about gods as a whole. However, he was a man who had learned, somewhere in his foggy past he couldn't remember fully. how to go about this dangerous, and frankly stupid, plan. It didn't matter, though. Not if it worked.

He had carefully gathered dropped feathers from the scavenger birds as they lingered over his impromptu camp. He knew they were just doing what they did as animals, but it made him uneasy to see them circling along with the vultures. He tried not to think of it too much.

He laid the five raven feathers in a circle around him, kneeling in the dusty earth as the right ritual words came spilling from his lips. He didn't need the goddess' attention properly, just whatever emissary of the Raven Queen who would answer. It was slap-dash, it wasn't refined. Just someone to answer his question and tell him if it was possible.

Magnus wasn't expecting to have closed his eyes to the unforgiving midday sun, scorching his back with sheer heat, and being plunged into the cool air of a desert's deepest night, like a salve against the warmth. He opened his eyes to find himself in a room that was more of the impression of high, shadowed walls than any edges or barriers he could see.

He felt a being looming unseen above and around him, incomprehensibly large to his human perspective. He wasn't meant to be able to see who was there. Her voice, however, was eloquent and echoing with the soft hush of falling feathers settling around him.

"Little mortal. What is it?"

This was it then. Magnus swallowed, steeling himself. "My wife and father-in-law were taken from me unfairly by a cowardly man. I...I'm willing to make deals and bargain for them. I'll play games. Anything. I...I just want to hold her again."

He was certain that for as long as he lived, he would never fully understand how he could feel the goddess tilt her head like a bird. "You...may attempt. I do not make this exception lightly. You can not bring the dead back to life who do not wish to be. That would make them undead and an abomination. As would be trying to make yourself, or another, unable to die. Removing yourself from the Astral Sea has grave consequences, and I am not the only one with a domain over death in this planar system. Death must happen, little mortal. It is simply a part of life." There was a pause, heavy as iron in his chest. "I require payment."

"Whatever it is, I'll pay it."

She laughed like a raven, all harsh music, like a rasp on velvet. "Patience. The terms." He nodded. "No matter the answers given, I will take your memory of this event and your knowledge of how to do this, so you may never attempt this again, nor share the knowledge of how. If you agree, I will open the way. If you do not agree, I will return you to where you came and leave your memory in tact. It will not work again."

The loss of the memory of how he got here, in exchange for one more chance to hold Julia?

It was a price he'd be willing to pay over and over for the rest of his life, if he had to. He would do so happily.

"I agree."

For a split moment, he was aware of others, as huge and unperceivable as she was, their emblems blazing against his mind, battering him with the knowledge of gods he hadn't known before, but did now. Whatever he just agreed to wasn't held to just her, but to the other deities of death of Abeir-Toril. What he had promised was important. He didn't have time to think about that, as noise like an unkindness of ravens taking flight as they called to the skies filled the room until it was almost too much. Magnus ducked his head, covering his ears, waiting to be beaten with unseen wings.

Then it all went still.

He opened his eyes, staring at the wide still ocean before him. It looked not unlike a starless sky stretched out into the distance. In his heart, he knew that if he stepped into those waters, he'd cease to live. To be. He'd wait there, with all the souls who had gone before.

Magnus stepped back, wary of the unmoving waters. Though it had no tide, he didn't want to find it lapping at his ankles. He turned, looked down the coastline, and began to walk. The crunching noise of sand, and the rattle of gravel, sounded beneath his feet, the only sound around him. It set him on edge, making him even more cautious of the water.

He had to have been walking for hours when he finally spotted a lone figure standing out against the horizon, the only thing not deep purple-blue-reds swirling as both sky and sea. The silhouette of her was so painfully obvious. It had to be her. Magnus ran.

He was so eager to see her again. The wild curls of her hair, barely bound back from her paint-splatter freckles. The heady scent of iron that surrounded her even through the heaviest and sweetest perfumes. Her hands, as callused as his. Her ropy, muscled arms. Her hips that spoke more than her words some days. The song of her laughter. The light in her eyes as she smiled, as they whispered lines of their wedding vows every day in lieu of "I love you".

She turned as he got closer, the sound of scattering stones beneath his feet sounding so much like rainfall as he crashed into her, scooping her up into his arms tightly. He kissed her deeply, filled with a warm thrill of joy as she kissed him back just as eagerly. They broke apart, leaving her gasping for air with lungs that didn't need to breathe.

"Magnus!" Julia gasped, trying to bite back a smile as she fretted over him. "What...I hope you didn't...you're not...you're not dead too, are you?"

He laughed as he nuzzled into the tender part where her neck met her shoulder. "No! No, there's..." He slowly put her down, trying to keep the warmth of her close. It felt like they had been apart an entire lifetime. "There's not a lot of time to explain. I'm not sure how long I actually have." He pulled back a little further, reaching out to take her hand in his own. "C'mon. Where's Steven?"

"What?" She frowned, and he fell even more in love. He could spend hours tracing each line of her face until she smiled, and trace all those lines too. "Magnus, what are you--?"

"Where's your father?"

"...Dad's _gone_, Magnus. He went into the Astral Sea."

Magnus paused for the first time since he saw her. His heart was hurting for the pain in his wife's voice. It was bad enough to hear her say those words, without hearing her own hurt behind it. "Then it's just us," he said quietly. "Julia, come with me. I made a deal. I...I can bring you back. You'll be alive! We can go somewhere else, start new, have a family. We can--"

"No."

He froze, feeling that warmth she brought him leech from his chest, hearing that hurt amplify in her voice. He was hurt by it too, and confused. So very confused. "What?"

"Magnus, I can't."

"Yes. You can." He knew he was laughing, almost desperately, unable to stop the surprise from bleeding into his voice. He knew he sounded rude, incredulous...so many things. But...why? Why would she say that? "I told you, I made a deal, it's okay!"

"No. No, we can't." He stared at her, waiting for something. Anything. A reasoning why Julia would do that. There had to be something, right? She sighed, looking out over the stillness of the Sea. "The goddess of Fate oversaw us arriving. She talked to me. We..._I _can't go back, Magnus. It's not right to. It's...you're...you're going to be amazing. And this...this isn't your time. Not yet. If I came back, I would change your fate. You can't. _Please,_ Magnus. I want to, but I _can't_."

"But..." He knew she was right. Julia was always right about this.

"I'll wait for you." Her words were as stubborn as the day they met, and her smile was more bittersweet and lovely than he had ever seen as Julia stepped back and away. "I'm so sorry Magnus, but you...you need to live."

He couldn't respond or move forward, even as he craved one last embrace, one more desperate kiss from her. In an instant, he was miles and planes of reality away from her, pulled through them in a way that felt hollowly familiar.

Magnus came to on the ground outside a cold pile of ruins in the dark of night, unaware of when he had collapsed, how many hours had passed since, and more frighteningly to him, why.

A long, silent night gave way into morning as he stared at the remains of Raven's Roost with a heavy heart. Finally, with the first fingers of dawn, he packed what belongings he had and turned his feet towards the nearest big city. He'd have to start a new life again, and maybe some mercenary work or throwing himself into some trouble would take his mind off the heartache he knew would never fully heal.

**Author's Note:**

> Lord.
> 
> Okay so I love all the "Orpheus Maneuver, but it works" fics, and. Uh. I thought "hey why not make an angst one".
> 
> WHOOPS.


End file.
